Monday, September 8, 2014

“Mom, please, can I watch Queen now? You know, the fun one?”

Fandoms are fun!

OK, I admit
inside I did do a Mommy Victory Dance of Joy when my daughter reqested I put on the Bohemian Rhapsody music video. As much as I want my girls to be themselves, have their own tastes, explore their personalities and feel free to
have opinions which differ from mine or my husband’s, part of me really dreads
the idea of them crying and screaming over pop singers like Justin Bieber or
whoever else is out there (I’m really trying to not know). I remember thinking
the girls around me who were losing their minds over New Kids on the Block were
slightly nuts, and then as a mom hearing about girls physically harming
themselves over that Bieber kid just made me eeek a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I
love fun fandoms and being enthusiastic about stuff (this Simon Pegg quote is
on our fridge), but I think enthusiasm and obsession are two very different
things. And I think there is a difference between blind adoration and gleeful
admiration.

So what do
I do to try to counter the strangely obsessive pop culture stuff the girls
encounter when they get to school? On weekends and in the mornings, I blast MY
music at them (insert evil laugh). They do have their own CD player in their
room and their own CDs – older one’s fave is her Taylor Swift Red CD and
younger one loves her Everly Brothers – and they do have their own playlist on
my phone which includes the Frozen soundtrack, but I admit to trying to teach
them there is more music out there. When I was a kid, I listened to my parents’
favorites which was a lot of Beatles. I think that’s a great place to start. In
Ukraine,
that was all I played on my phone during our down time, and my daughter learned
a lot of their songs. I also listened to Guns and Roses, Amy Grant, and Dead
Milkmen when I was in elementary school. A bit of an eclectic mix, and I’m
really not sure Dead Milkmen are entirely appropriate, so I might hold off on
them (although I do still listen to them as a guilty pleasure occasionally).

In the
mornings, while we are getting ready, I put on Pandora. Last year it was the
Cat Stevens station.

So nice and
chill! What a nice way to start the day. This year, I decided to boost the
energy level a bit, so we switched to the Queen station. The girls LOVED it. I
like to use weekends to push my own agendas (also known as parenting), so I
spent a day just playing Queen songs and watching Queen videos on YouTube and
talking about why Freddie Mercury was awesome. It was a really fun day. The
girls were learning life lessons and how to head bang and insulting my hair (my hair naturally looks like Brian May's at its fluffiest),
and I was getting bounce around like a doof and giggle and play with my kids.
So what are the great lessons that can be learned from spending a day with
Queen?

If you are passionate about something, do that. Queen had a passion for music
and creating new, cool songs together. Freddie Mercury had a passion for
writing and singing. When the girls learned that he was singing right up
until he died, they were impressed.

If you have a talent, use it ALL. One of the girls favorite songs is
Bohemian Rhapsody. They love how it
sounds like so many pieces all in one. They also thought it was cool how not all the Queen songs over the years sounded alike. There is a variety of sounds and styles. When they
learned the songs were written by the band members and they each had different tastes, but they agreed to use and appreciate the talents of
everyone, the girls thought that was really cool. Talent wasn’t wasted. It
was stretched.

You don’t have to like everything about someone or know every
detail to listen to or like their music. Ok, so this isn’t strictly Queen related,
but it is important. Do I want my girls to imitate everything Queen or any
other rock band did? Of course not! Although, the part about getting a
degree in physics like Brian May can be imitated with my blessing. Liking
a band does not mean memorizing every fact about them and shouldn’t. I
like Ani DiFranco, but I have no idea when her birthday is. How does that
change how her music makes me feel? Also, fans don’t need to prove themselves by trying to become in every way the people they are listening to. The girls can bounce around to RadioGa Ga without
needing to also get drunk in a bar in London. I like when there are some admirable qualities, of course, and those
are what I focus on when I talk to the girls (physics degree, use of talent, camaraderie, creativity, etc), but everyone has flaws and
makes mistakes. We talk about the flaws and learn from them, too, so we
DON’T imitate those parts. Mostly, though, we talk about the music and enjoy
it and live our own lives, because frankly we are awesome as is. The girls know the name of Freddie Mercury and that is pretty much all the Queen trivia they can give you. Everything else was broad strokes: they wrote their own songs, there were four of them, Freddie died after he got HIV, Crazy Little Thing Called Love was written in the bath tub (ok, that's specific, but funny so totally worth knowing).

It’s ok to get pumped up about yourself. I love listening to Queen in the morning
because I like the idea of sending my girls to school singing “We will
ROCK YOU!” I want them pumped up about themselves and about life. I want
them to celebrate their successes and be proud of themselves. I want them
to feel like they can conquer the world. One thing we talked about was the
difference in the messages of the songs. They weren’t all about dating or
hooking up or breaking up. There were songs about simply kicking butt and
being awesome. That, I think, is a good thing to have as a background
soundtrack for a fourth grader.

If my daughters don’t like my same music,
that’s fine. I assume they won’t like all the same things as me, but I can
still expose them to it and talk to them about it. I can still try to teach
them there is a world bigger than what they see and hear at the lunch table.
And I can explain that they will most likely never marry a pop star, so
devoting all their time, energy, and money to obsessing over one is not
healthy. It is much healthier to just rock out and be awesome for themselves. So
this is how I’m parenting in the mornings, and I’m having a good time
empowering my girls, so don’t stop me now. (And, yes, this is my personal Mom
Theme Song.)

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About Me

I am a former retreat leader and current mother of three loving that I get to spend all day with my daughters. I'm using my limited free time to blog about my happy walrus mom adventure and give my brain a chance to vent. You can keep up to date on blog posts by following me on Twitter - @HappyWalrusMom